Thumbs up? or down?

Guess I couldn't stop laughing. When I got my hands on that big thumbs up hand, I would tell people good job on things. Actually I wasn't saying good job, I was saying bad job. Oops, hehe..



Jon decided to say that to people.



This was my group, Em was the group leader. I can't remember what we won but we did win for the best drama performed. Em won the best supporting actress. She can go to Hollywood now. Hahaha...



Look at that Jon, bullying me. He knew I wasn't tall enough to reach so he purposely did that. I did get the thumbs up thing back in the end. Guess he is soft-hearted to give me back. Muahaha...

On friendship

I am going to summarize what I hear and learnt from friendship from church camp and reading relationship book on friendship. First of all, there is this model of friendship list.

• mutual commitment

I think this is common. Friends do commit to each other.

• sacrificial love

From 1 Samuel in the Bible, it is the friendship from Jonathan and David. Jonathan's dad tried to kill David and Jonathan was almost killed because he was protecting David from his father.
I was thinking, in this kind of world now, no one would do that kind of thing because it is not the norm. People would think you are crazy and start thinking if gay or lesbian. *shakes head* Such a world.
From my point of view, friendships nowadays are just friends hanging out and helping each other out. I bet there is no such thing as sacrificial love between friends. I mean, if I ask you to die for your friend or friends, would you want to do that?

• openness and honesty

Honesty is a hallmark of real friendship. Friends do not pretend about themselves or others do not desire or need to cover up their struggles or failings. -Nigel D. Polluck-
You do have to be open and honest to your friends. If you are not sure if you can trust the friends you are with, don't open too much. But be honest because they won't like you and you can lose their trust in you if you happen to lie or do something bad to them or even one of them.

• service

Service? What do you mean by that? Well, I think it is more like you do things for your friends. I do believe that. Now compare with what you usually do for your siblings or parents. I think it is similar.
There are ways to show your love for your family and friends. You help them out on things, eg buying things for them or just helping out on chores. Anyway, my point is that if you yell at your siblings or parents or disobey them, that doesn't mean you don't love your family or siblings. =)

• God - centreness


• interdependence

Friendship is not about making people dependent upon us or about us becoming dependent on other people.
True friendship can only develop and grow when we work together, trust each other, help each other and rely on each other.
With true friends pointing out your weakness or something bad, I don't think you should keep it at heart and decide that he or she is not a good friend. Instead, you should look at yourself first and try to undo your weakness. Yes, you are not perfect and your friends are not perfect but it would help to study yourself first before start blaming on friends. Not all friends give good advice but some particularly do. Some friends are there to listen to you and give you a long big hug when you are down.
I do admit that I don't like my friends to see me crying if there is anything so I tend to go away or be quiet if I see my friends crying. So don't take it to heart, thinking that your friends desert you when you need someone to talk while you're crying.

• willing to let go

Friendship is so important and sometimes there are things that we need to let go in order to let the friendship to last. 1 Samuel 20:42 shows that.

Am I being too straight-forward? Hmm.. this is just my point of view. I will let you have your opinions, I won't judge or be defensive. I am beginning to refer to Bible verses a lot. =)

This is from church camp talks and I summarized it up. Some may be the same from what I said above.

• Friends do point out your mistakes or your differences. But how do you feel from it? Embarrassed or anger? If embarrassed, would you rather strangers telling you those or your friends? If anger, study yourself first before you start blaming your friends. Humans aren't perfect so your friends are there to tell you your differences. Again, would you rather strangers telling you?

I think I prefer my friends to tell me. I rather them laughing at me than strangers or friends whom I don't normally talk to.

• Friends don't just give advices or comfort you, they go through each step with you. They are there to guide you so don't keep them away. Remember that some friends deal with their problems better than you.

YAG camp

After coming back from field trip, I had 2 hours to shower and got ready my luggage for the church camp. Talk about being busy. Actually I packed way before I went for field trip.

Anyway, the church camp was awesome. It was relaxing and there was a lot of photos taken. So, photos will be uploaded when I get them. There's this game, doctor and patient. Everyone is a patient and your doctor is anonymous. You're also a doctor to someone else. The doctors were  to look after patient, they can write notes or bring food for their patient. And doctors cannot reveal who they are. It was dinner time when I arrived. When I sat down for dinner, someone approached me from behind and gave me soup. You can imagine how surprised I was. Only then, Em told me about the game.

There were talks on family, friends, education and future/career. I wrote quite a bit of stuff on friends which I will put it in a different post. The others were alright but not a lot. Then, there were games and drama. Oh, my group won the best drama performed. =)



This is my group and Em was the leader. =)



I was already on the ground when photo was taken. I was just too fast. =P

Notes to show off

Did I show how the conference note book look like?  It definitely looks nice. I love the front page.



I bought one book based on relationships. WZ and Em also bought a book. Em was very free to go and search for the book covers online so I am just going to refer hers to you guys. I am just too lazy to go search for mine.  I think my photo above is very blur because it's from my camera. It was in a small size photo. Hey, at least I took a photo of it.

Reasons

9 days away from everything and it means that there are a lot of things to catch up on. I am still reading my cousins' blog and both of them do blog a lot. Blogging a lot means good because it means I know what they are up to. =)

Anyway, I am not supposed to complain about being away for so long. Yes, it is fun to get away from everything and just enjoy doing something else and not worrying about study.

I got few comments about the things I learnt from the conference. Some were arguing about my opinions or is it questioning. Well, it is good to voice out your opinions but I won't change my mind just because of what you said. To be honest, I had fears before attending the conference. Now, I decide to let God decide for me. If He thinks that I will get married, then I will. If not, then no.

I say this as a concession, not as a command. I wish that all men were as I am. But each man has his own gift from God; one has this gift, another has that. Now to the unmarried and the widows I say: It is good for them to stay unmarried, as I am. But if they cannot control themselves, they should marry, for it is better to marry than to burn with passion.

I am not sure what verse I got it from but it's from 1 Corinthians 5:7. The verse really makes me think a lot. Sorry lah I don't want to share my thoughts on this because you would just argue more. So I am keeping my reasons to myself.

Hiatus for so long

Now, I am officially back home. I have no more field trips or church camps for this semester. However, I got another field trip in August. Stay tune for that. =)

Anyway, my field trip was good. I had to hike to all the places marked on the map. I think I may have lost weight because of all the walking. Details of all this will be up soon. I just want to post something to say that I am back.

After coming back from field trip, I got ready and headed off to church camp. When I arrived, my friends couldn't recognized me. They said I became dark. Well, I was mostly under the sun during the field trip. I did use sun block, though. Camp was great, though I was physically tired most of the time. It was good to relax and not do any work at all. There were few talks on family, friends and careers. More details to come. =)

Third and Last day

I was mentally tired by the third day and felt a bit lazy to go on but nevertheless, I pulled myself together and made myself listening. Fourth day was different. Since it was the last day, we had our breakfast in the living lounge.

The ICF members who went to the conference. We had such a good time. Everyone was so happy.



This is where we had our breakfast, lunch and dinner except for the breakfast on the last day.



This is the kitchen. We also had duties in the kitchen of serving and cleaning up.

Second day

The second day started with manuscript discovery, reflection, seminar and a talk at night. Reflection was when we went to a place where we can sit down and thought about what we have learnt about ourselves or about what we have been learning. At least that is what I thought so. We had a free time after lunch till 4pm in which we decided to walk to the stream. It was a good weather to walk around as there were no sun or raining.







Above is the place where we stayed.

first day

This is just to say what we have been doing there. After classes on Friday, Mer came to pick Em, WZ and me to the UCSA where we were supposed to wait for others. WZ was the driver on the journey there. It was supposed to be a 50 minutes drive but we got lost because the signs were too small and it was getting dark that time. But not to fear, we reached our destination. God was guiding us. :)



After reaching there, we went to check out where our rooms were. We were all scattered in all the girls rooms and requested to sleep in the same room. We had our first talk that night on God and His world.  That is the end of first day.

Belated April Fool

People seem to get me fooled with things on April Fool Day. Sis 1 texted me and said, 'OMG, there's filming opposite the house and Jay Chou is there.' I actually believed it because I wasn't there. Turned out it was April Fool. In my first year, she fooled by saying that she got a boyfriend. Yea, I guess I am gullible at times.

My flatmate tried April Fool twice on me. First was she said something was on my face, I rubbed my face few times before she said sheepishly April Fool. The other one was she said she has a date. I believed it when she said it. She told me on msn and got another friend to play along. Man.. I feel so embarrassed after they told me April Fool. Sigh..